Meaningful gestures: Electrophysiological indices of iconic gesture comprehension
Abstract
To assess semantic processing of iconic gestures, EEG (29 scalp sites) was recorded as adults watched cartoon segments paired with soundless videos of congruous and incongruous gestures followed by probe words. Event-related potentials time-locked to the onset of gestures and probe words were measured in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants judged the congruency between gestures and cartoons. Gestures elicited an N400-like component (gesture N450) that was larger for incongruent than congruent items, as well as a late positivity that was larger for congruent items. In Experiment 2, participants assessed the relatedness between probe words and preceding cartoon-gesture pairs. N450 effects to gestures were observed without overlapping positivity. These findings suggest that iconic gestures are subject to semantic processes analogous to those evoked by other meaningful representations, such as pictures and words.
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The N450 is not only tied to cognitive conflict/action monitoring, but has also been associated with congruency processing during action observation and unexpected socially inappropriate actions.
“Importantly, the N450 is not only tied to cognitive conflict/ action monitoring, but has also been associated with congruency processing during action observation (e.g., whether gestures and a given context match or not, Wu & Coulson, 2005), and unexpected socially inappropriate actions (Proverbio & Riva, 2009).”
From Interplay of self-other distinction and cognitive control mechanisms in a social automatic imitation task: An ERP study (2021) · cites this paper as Wu & Coulson, 2005
More negative N450 amplitudes were reported for incongruent set-ups and unexpected actions.
“More negative N450 amplitudes were reported for incongruent set-ups and unexpected actions (Proverbio & Riva, 2009;Wu & Coulson, 2005; see also Amoruso et al., 2013).”
From Interplay of self-other distinction and cognitive control mechanisms in a social automatic imitation task: An ERP study (2021) · cites this paper as Wu & Coulson, 2005
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Rauchbauer, B., Lorenz, C., Lamm, C., & Pfabigan, D. M. (2021) · Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience · doi:10.3758/s13415-021-00878-w · Cited by 7 · see citing works
- Authors
- Wu, Y. C., & Coulson, S.
- Affiliations
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wu, Ying Choon
- ORCID
- Wu, Ying Choon
- Venue
- Psychophysiology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2005-11
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 654-667
- ISSN
- 0048-5772 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8986
- OpenAlex
- W1967429744
- Cited by
- 187
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 9
- FWCI
- 3.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychophysiology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (n01mh002002-000)
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH 2002-07)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Hearing Impairment and Communication
- Keywords
- iconic gestures, gesture comprehension, semantic processing, N450, event-related potentials, late positive potential, word meaning, visual word recognition
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Electroencephalography, Electrophysiology, Evoked Potentials, Female, Humans, Male, Nonverbal Communication, Psychomotor Performance, Reaction Time
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